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Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Reading, Speaking & Writing

Book Review!

We dug into that pile from the yard sale this morning and picked out the picture book called Charlie the Caterpillar by Dom De Luise; illustrated by Christopher Santoro. It's only 40 pages give or take, so it didn't take long to read. (Key in our closing salutation.)

We studied the pictures...

Charlie is soooo cute!

We studied the message...

Be kind to others.Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.What's outside doesn't matter...actions matter.

It's
never a bad idea to take a break from the heavy stuff and just enjoy a
good picture book. I love caterpillars so when I saw this at a yard sale
I snapped it up. Later I realized it was written by one of my favorite
comedians, Dom De Luise. [For the younger set, Dom is the father of the
actor who plays Mr. Russo on The Wizards of Waverly Place.] I could hear
his voice while reading some of it.

The
illustrations are great. Charlie is such a cute caterpillar. Looks like a
wooly bear to me.

The theme of this story is
one of self esteem. A play on Hans Christian Andersen's The Ugly
Duckling. In the first part of the book, Charlie goes inching along
looking for some friends to play with, but they wouldn't because he was
"an ugly caterpillar." Each time he left a group he felt bad about
himself.

Then his cocooning instinct took over
and he took a nap.

When he awoke he found he was a
butterfly, but still very much the same Charlie as before.

As he tested his wings he passed the same groups that
had rejected him. Their response was much different now. But Charlie
flew on and found Katie. She is a new little caterpillar and she is
crying because she can't find anyone to play with. Charlie becomes her
friend and they are happy together.

The only
thing keeping me from giving this story 5 stars is the fact that
butterfly Charlie uses the same words to reject those clamoring to be
his friends as when they initially rejected him then adds as he flies
away, "serves them right."

Speaking and Writing

We all make typos in our blogs. That really doesn't bother me. Some are even cute. However, there are times when I feel I should make a comment to gently correct someone, but don't. I don't want to offend anyone or hurt feelings. I do want you to sound as intelligent as I know you are. So today I'd like to look at pronoun usage.

What's a pronoun?These words replace proper names. I, me, he, she, we, us, they, it, you.The sentence I've been seeing a lot of lately is "Me and ___ are excited." It does get confusing when you add an extra someone to the mix. So think of it without the other person. Would you say, "Me is excited"? Sounds odd doesn't it?

Yes, I agree "I and ___ are excited" sounds a little funny too. Just shift the order. "Melody and I are excited." "She and I went to the movies." "She and I saw Taylor Swift in concert." Note: the other pronoun used in these situations is not "her" but "she."As everyone is headed back to school (or is already there) I won't go into more detail. If you have questions, feel free to ask me or ask you Language Arts or English teachers. They'd be happy to help too.Best wishes.Much love,Melody, Xyra, Kaya, Kirsten, and Lanie